In 2100, Whoever's Left Will Curse Us

     Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer, pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts, including "tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations tied to his work for Trump, including payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate that were designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-candidate," according to CNN.
     "Cohen admitted," CNN continues, "that 'in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office' he acted to keep information that would have been harmful to the candidate from becoming public."
     Trump, not named in the court filing, is referred to as "Individual-1."
     Donald Trump tweeted about Cohen and this new development.  One of them, from today, reads:

     "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen!"

     By far the funniest thing Trump has ever written or said, the joke deserves to be judged on its own merits.  It provoked instead a mass of snide counter-tweets, like:

     "Next Trump will say, 'If anyone is looking for a good campaign manager, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Paul Manafort'" [A laughing-crying emoji follows here]

     "I hear Michael Avenatti is pretty good."

     "Good thing I found this Yelp review before I hired this Cohen guy to handle MY Russian collusion!"

     Tommy Vietor, replying to @realDonaldTrump, wrote:

     "This was funny."

     Moises Cohen tweet-scolded Vietor:

     "The sitting president has been implicated in two federal crimes and his first national statement is an attempt at a joke?  How is this funny?  Mr. Trump is not a victim here.  He directed his lawyer to commit felonies.  He's angling for sympathy."

     Angling for sympathy, Moises Cohen?  Maybe so, but it's a fucking hilarious tweet, delivered deadpan and dry.  It's one of Trump's only admirable accomplishments.  It brightened my day.  I laughed hard when I read it.  I don't disagree with your points about Trump and Michael Cohen, that the President "directed his lawyer to commit felonies," that this is a serious situation.  Trump's tweet is hilarious nevertheless.  It also illuminates his ability to persist in the face of extreme opposition.  Look at how the news media have been spreading Trump's weird fault-filled life all over the twenty-four hour news cycle for three years now without doing him any harm.
     Just recently, former White House employee, Omarosa Manigault, who got into the habit of secretly recording conversations with Trump and others in the Executive Branch, as well as some in Trump's family circle, brought out a tell-it-all book about her time working for "the most powerful man in the world."
     She hinted without subtlety that she possesses audio of Trump using the "N-word."  Much speculation on what this would do to his presidency if the American people were to hear Trump say that word ensued on cable news.  Some judged that the result would be "devastating."  Don Lemon of CNN, a Black man, said, correctly in my view, that if we hear Trump say the N-word it will have no meaningful effect whatsoever.
     One of the most interesting of the released audio selections is a phone call between Lara Trump (wife of the President's son, Eric) and Omarosa Manigault, dealing with a job opportunity for the latter after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly.
     In the recording, Manigault, who is Black, is offered by Lara Trump the opportunity to join the Trump reelection effort.  Lara Trump says the job will involve making a few trips to New York, but mostly it won't be heavy in the work category--I'm paraphrasing. Lara Trump says, "In the White House you were making 179, right?  Well, we can offer you, let's see--"
     Here, she's clearly punching numbers on a calculator.  "We can give you 180."  She goes on to mention that this money will come from small dollar donations.  In other words, Trump supporters of modest means (ordinary people) sending in their small and earnest donations, not realizing that some of their money will pay for a purely symbolic job, to the amount of a hundred and eighty grand, offered to a disgruntled former White House employee to keep her from saying anything embarrassing about Donald Trump.
     What screamed at me as I listened to this exchange was the spectacle of a rich White woman trying to buy a Black woman.
     Omarosa Manigault, to her credit, refused the "job."
     What will happen next in Executive Branch Reality Drama is anyone's guess.  I'm not enamored with the Trump shitshow.  His policies on the environment, on deregulation of polluting industries, on war, are all horrible and match the viewpoints of the Republican Party, as well as many among the Democrats.  His tweets and grotesque personality are the least important elements of his impact on the world, yet these insignificant insipidities continue to obsess pseudo-journalists who have become as stupid and irresponsible as the man they're covering in a sensationalistic way just to boost ratings, thus making money for their corporate masters who actually appreciate Trump and what he does financially for them, while America goes down the toilet.
     The son of a bitch made a funny observation.  I take that for what it's worth, a good joke that shows that he's poking fun at himself since he's the one who trusted Michael Cohen in the first place, just as he trusted Manigault.
     Who else is recording him without his knowledge?  Are we supposed to get upset that the rich and powerful get surveilled sometimes without their awareness?  I care about the privacy rights of the fuckers in the White House getting caught on audio unawares as much as I care that John Brennan lost his security clearance.
     As Trump's life gets more pressured with legal shit, many in the news media speak of impeachment; of, as Rob Reiner put it today, "the President not making it to the end of his first term."
     My logical question for Rob Reiner is, "Are you a Mike Pence supporter?"
     I sure as fuck don't support Individual-2.

                                                                            Vic Neptune